Warner Bros. Japan announced on September 18 that Tow Ubukata's JΕ«ni-nin no Shinitai Kodomo-tachi (Twelve Children Who Want to Die) novel is getting a live-action film adaptation that will premiere in January. A teaser video for the film debuted on the same day. Megumi Hayashibara, who played Rune Balot in the anime films of Ukugata's Mardock Scramble novel, reads the title in the video.
The story is a locked-room mystery where 12 kids go into an abandoned hospital to give up on life. In the room where they meet, a boy is already lying dead, and no one knows who he is. The novel was nominated for the Naoki Prize for 2016.
Ubukata debuted as a short story writer in 1996, and he won the Kadokawa Sneaker Grand Prize with the work "Kuroi Kisetsu" (Black Season). He won the Eiji Yoshikawa Award for New Writers in 2009 for Tenchi Meisatsu, and the FΕ«tarΕ Yamada Award in 2012 for Mitsukuniden. He wrote the original novel that inspired the Mardock Scramble anime films, and has also served as the series composition writer for Ghost in the Shell Arise, Psycho-Pass 2, Heroic Age, Fafner EXODUS, and Le Chevalier D'Eon.
